Teresa Boardman

The Wabasha Street Bridge is a lovely sight unless you're falling off of it.

​Stefon Banks was out for a late-night stroll with some friends when they started to cross the Wabasha Street Bridge in downtown St. Paul.

At some point, it was imperative that the 20-year-old get from one side of the bridge to the other. So he decided to leave the pedestrian walkway and lope across the four traffic lanes to the other side.

Only one problem: There's an 8-foot gap between the northbound and southbound lanes. Banks did not know this.

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Minnesota Department of Corrections

Gregory Larsin has a long history of crime leading up to this hit-and-run.

​Gregory Larsin wasn't being reasonable when he allegedly ran over 78-year old Roger Tetu in St. Paul's Dayton's Bluff neighborhood on Tuesday, and decided to drive off with a shattered windshield.

And he wasn't being reasonable when he refused to turn himself in to police who tracked him down over the telephone and asked him nicely to come down to the station.

Larsin finally did something reasonable this afternoon when he turned himself in to St. Paul police.

Larsin's got an extensive criminal background, including a few arrests related to automobiles, but nothing comes close to leaving an old man to die in the street.

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Her business is none of your business.

​When Barack Obama was running for president, Michele Bachmann loved to talk about his relationship with Bill Ayers, the old hippie who blew up federal buildings when Barry Obama was a little kid.

Bachmann's fear over Obama's connection to Ayers led to one of her most iconic moments, when she told Chris Matthews on MSNBC's "Hardball," when she talked about Reverend Jeramiah Wright and Ayers at length, before finally saying she was "very concerned [Obama] might have anti-American views."

Now that it's Michele's turn to answer questions about people she's associated with -- say, someone she's been married to for 32 years and has five kids with -- Bachmann is refusing to answer any questions about Marcus Bachmann's "ungay" clinic.

Twice, Bachmann has faced point-blank questions about Bachmann & Associates, the place where young gays can go to pray the gay away. And twice, Bachmann has unflinchingly dodged the question.
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Steinhafel has enough money to breed giant Target-brand dogs.

​Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel makes a lot of money -- too much, says the Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal.

Steinhafel's $24 million annual salary is the highest CEO salary in the state, according to new data released by the Business Journal. Great as that sounds, Steinhafel also made another, more dubious list, which ranked him the No. 4 most overpaid CEO in Minnesota.

Steinhafel's not being punished for having a big salary. In fact, he's not even that far ahead of second-place finisher George Buckley of 3M, who pulled in $23.7 million last year.

But with a "Company Performance" rank of 60th, and a salary rank of No. 1, the gap between what Steinhafel gets paid and how his company performs is dramatic -- almost as dramatic as how fast his salary has increased.

In 2008, his first year as CEO, Steinhafel got $13.3 million; last year that number inched up to $13.5 million; and in 2010 it nearly doubled to $24 million.
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Bachmann got lots of small contributions, and a handful of big ones.

​As of June 30, Michele Bachmann's campaign warchest had about $3.7 million in it, $2 million of which she rolled over from her own political action committee. That still means Bachmann for President raised about $1.7 million in a red-hot two weeks in June.

As has been the case for the last two years, most of the money -- this time, about $1.1 million -- comes from a huge number of small donations. Small amounts leave the donors' identities hidden, as donations under $200 don't have to be listed for the Federal Election Commission.

But that still leaves $564,804 from 1,042 donors as evidence that yes, some real people are paying for Michele Bachmann to run for president. So who are they?
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Jeff Kolodzinski holds the record-breaking fish from last year.

​Jeff Kolodzinski, the former Twin Cities resident who set the Guinness World Record for most fish caught in a 24-hour period last year, is trying to break his own mark today. 

Last year on July 30, Kolodzinski sat on the dock at Maynard's Restaurant on Lake Minnetonka and stayed there until he'd caught 2,143 fish -- or maybe the same stupid fish 2,143 times -- to set a new world record for speed and stamina. At that rate, Kolodzinski was catching one and a half fish per minute, all day and all night.

Banking on the fact that the fish in Lake Minnetonka haven't learned a thing since that day,  Kolodzinski has come back. Starting at 11 a.m., Kolodzinski, who now lives in Milwaukee, will be casting from the same spot to try and break his own record during Fishing for Life's Fish-A-Thon, a charity event that should probably renamed Jeff Kolodzinski Catches A Ton of Fish.

Kolodzinski told the Pioneer Press the trick is his simple rod and reel, which allow him to bait, catch, and release the fish rapidly.
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Whitcomb got near the maximum sentence for his crime.

​Scott Whitcomb, a former police officer and employee with the Drug Enforcement Agency, has been sentenced to 25 years in prison for the production of child pornography.

Whitcomb, 48, was arrested in December after he was caught by police in an undercover online operation. In April, he pleaded guilty to the charges against him, admitting he'd produced videos that featured three boys younger than 16 years old.

Whitcomb, who lived in Zimmerman, carried out his crimes from April 2007 until his arrest. Whitcomb lured the three boys to his house with video games, porn magazines, and videos, according to the Star Tribune. If the boys didn't cooperate, Whitcomb could turn violent.
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Adam Martinez, killed by a single punch.

​In our cover story this week, we mention a California District Attorney, Jerry Benito, who declined to press charges in a one-punch homicide and lost his re-election in the ensuing controversy over his decision last fall.

The victim in that case, Adam Martinez, was flirting with a woman at a dance club when her boyfriend, Lennart Schauman, walked over and sucker-punched him. Martinez hit his head on the concrete floor and died a week later.

A surveillance camera captured the attack on video, which Martinez' family used to rally voters against Benito in his campaign for re-election. Check out the footage after the jump, as well as Benito's explanation for why he didn't press charges.

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Larry Klayman: lawyer, activist, character on West Wing.

​Bradlee Dean's lawyer, Larry Klayman, is quite the character.

Really. As in, there's actually a character in the show West Wing based off of him named Harry Klaypool. Klayman is also the founder of Freedom Watch, might have been the inspiration for the Tea Party, and claims to know Michele Bachmann "very well."

He's also the guy who sued Facebook for more than $1 billion earlier this year. And, according to state records, his license is currently on "administrative suspension" in Pennsylvania. In 2009, Klayman released a book called "Whores: Why and How I Came to Fight the Establishment."

Klayman and Dean appeared on Michele Tafoya's CBS radio show yesterday to talk about their lawsuit against MSNBC host Rachel Maddow and Minnesota Independent writer Andy Birkey. The suit claims that the two journalists took an excerpt from Dean's radio show out of context and defamed him.

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Bachmann gets her news from sources that haven't been easy on her lately.

​During the question and answer session at the National Press Club this afternoon, most of of Michele Bachmann's answers were predictable.

Yes, she's still against raising the debt ceiling. Yes, she still thinks Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are the source of the entire U.S. housing crisis, even though she used them to finance her own home. What's that about her husband's "ungay" clinic? Well, anyway, she loves Marcus and she's running for president, next question, thank you.

When Bachmann was asked where she got her news -- the "Katie Couric to Sarah Palin" question that made the Alaska Governor look like such a babbling idiot -- she at first answered like Palin.

"I'm a big reader, and I read everything," she said.

When pressed for the liberal news outlets she reads, Bachmann gave a stunning response.

"As far as television goes, I will go to MSNBC, to see what MSNBC has to say," she said. And then: "And also the Huffington Post, and see what they have to say, or the Daily Beast."
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